Re: BCP97bis and "freely available"

John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com> Mon, 18 October 2021 20:42 UTC

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Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2021 16:41:51 -0400
From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com>
To: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com>, ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: BCP97bis and "freely available"
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--On Tuesday, October 19, 2021 09:04 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com> wrote:

>...
> I think the original concern was indeed standards that (for 
> proprietary or other reasons) were actually kept secret.
> So "freely" didn't imply "free of charge"; it meant available
> to the general public. In that sense it's closely related
> to "open standards". Those are standards that are open to
> the general public. I think that's what we insist on, and
> "free of charge" is desirable, but not essential.

Right.  But, to see if we are all on the same page about that,
it is very different from justifying a rule that might require
that authors or WGs go out and purchase a large quantity of
copies of a document and distribute them.  

john